


Habib Albi

by sheafrotherdon



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 15th Century, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:01:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25448788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: Almeria, 1401.It is Yusuf’s constant hope that he may arrange for Nicolò to feel the least amount of pain of all of them, even in small things.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 58
Kudos: 871





	Habib Albi

Yusuf can’t help the smile that breaks across his face as Nicolò arrives home. “Ah, _ya rouhi_ ,” he says, delighted to see him after even a few short hours apart. It’s a source of constant wonder to him, the way he longs for Nicolò, even when they are together. He sets his charcoal down on the table beside the parchment scraps he’s sewn into a rudimentary notebook, his sketching done. “My heart.”

Nicolò looks at him sullenly. “Today was a terrible day.”

Yusuf tsks sympathetically, rounding the table and crossing toward him. “Tell me,” he says, taking Nicolò’s cap out of his hands and hanging it on a peg.

“The parchment was hairy.” Nicolò unbuckles his belt, letting his long woolen tunic fall loose. 

Yusuf has always loved this particular tunic, its worsted blue bringing out the color of Nicolò’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, as Nicolò ducks out of the tunic and folds it before setting it on a bench.

“And the ink was too thin.”

“Don’t you make the ink?”

“For _three hundred years_ , yes, I have made the ink.” Nicolò sighs. “But today I couldn’t get it right.”

Yusuf catches him by the arms and kisses him warmly on the mouth. “There is always tomorrow.”

“I cannot do this for much longer,” Nicolò says. “I cannot, Yusuf. When will they return?”

Yusuf has no more idea than Nicolò. It’s been four months since they saw Andy and Quynh off to track a merchant who had sailed from Grenada a week before the four had made it to Almeria. They had agreed that Nicolò and Yusuf stood the best chance of infiltrating the guilds; it made sense for them to establish a home while the women searched further. “I do not know, _habib albi_.” He smiles as he watches Nicolò chew his lip. “Are you not even a little happy to see me?”

Nicolò sighs, but inclines his head. “I am always happy to see you.” He leans in to kiss him again, slow and lush, a kiss to make Yusuf’s heart ache.

They part and Yusuf brushes Nicolò’s long hair back from his face. “You seem very sad.” He hates when Nicolò is sad. “The parchment with the hair, the ink . . .”

“ _Three hundred years_ ,” Nicolò grumbles.

“Come with me.” Yusuf reaches for Nicolò’s hand. “I have bread and wine and we will eat and you will tell me of your day.”

Nicolò winces. “My hand,” he says by way of explanation, and Yusuf lifts it to his mouth, kisses his palm. When Nicolo’s cheeks pink and his mouth quirks in a smile, Yusuf uncurls his ink-stained fingers. 

“You wrote much today.”

“Much,” Nicolò agrees, groaning softly as Yusuf presses his fingers into the fleshy heel of Nicolò’s palm.”That feels good.”

It is Yusuf’s constant hope that he may arrange for Nicolò to feel the least amount of pain of all of them, even in small things. He pulls Nicolò toward the window, to the stool beside the rough table, across from the mattress stuffed thickly with sweet-scented grass. “Come,” he says, and sits himself, pushing the bread and the cheese wrapped in cloth toward Nicolò. “Tell me.”

Nicolò shakes his head. “I cannot be so idle,” he says. “To sit all day, to hunch over my desk . . . “

Yusuf reaches for his hand again, stretches Nicolò’s fingers and massages each knuckle in turn. “There will be time to act when we know for certain that de Coria is the source.”

Nicolò looks from his hand to Yusuf’s face. “I have heard nothing in days.”

“Shhhh, _ya hayati_. Andromache and Quynh will come back to us, and together . . .”

Nicolò rolls his shoulders. “I know. I must be patient.” He lets out a long breath. “I was never good at patience.”

“Now that is not true,” Yusuf says. “You have very often, very patiently undone me to the point of . . .”

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, flushed but laughing softly. “I mean in other things.”

“Why speak of other things when we are alone and you are half-dressed?” asks Yusuf, seeing opportunity. He sets Nicolò’s hand down on the table and pushes back his stool. “What else could be important enough to speak of right now?”

Nicolò’s gaze is warm as Yusuf moves toward him, as he sets a hand on Nicolò’s knee and lowers himself to kneel between Nicolò’s thighs. Nicolò is smiling and shaking his head. “You are trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?” Yusuf asks, leaning to press a kiss to Nicolò’s sternum through his linen shift.

Nicolò tangles his left hand in Yusuf’s hair. “Yes,” he whispers, and leans down to kiss Yusuf slowly, touching his tongue to Yusuf’s tongue, sending shivers the length of Yusuf’s spine.

Yusuf kisses back, running his hands up the inside of Nicolò’s thighs to the point where his hose meet his breeches. “Too many clothes,” he murmurs against Nicolò’s mouth.

“Mine or yours?” Nicolò asks.

“Both,” Yusuf says, smiling, as his fingers busy themselves with the ties at Nicolò’s waist. He bends his head to see his work, and Nicolò glances a kiss to his hair.

“I do not mean to be such a trial,” he says.

Yusef, a tie unfastened, looks up again. “You are never a trial,” he huffs. It displeases him to hear anyone talk badly of Nicolò, even Nicolò himself.

“I have been sour,” Nicolò offers, reasonably.

Yusuf shakes his head, rubs a thumb over the sliver of skin showing above Nicolò’s hose, and hums, pleased, when Nicolò shivers. “You feel caged. I understand.”

Nicolò’s face does something complicated, then he cups Yusuf’s face between both hands and kisses him fervently. Yusuf leans into it, to the heat building between them, to the feeling of being so cherished by another. When they break, Nicolò is breathless. “I do not deserve you,” he says.

“We deserve each other many times over,” Yusuf teases, laughing, and Nicolò laughs too, stands so that he can pull off his shift, giving Yusuf the opportunity to kiss where his thumb had grazed. Nicolò is already half-hard, and Yusuf hums appreciatively, presses a kiss to the skin above Nicolò’s breeches. “Against the wall,” he says firmly.

Nicolò raises an eyebrow but complies, and Yusuf admires the picture he makes, broad shouldered and narrow hipped, watching Yusuf hungrily. “What are you waiting for?” Nicolò asks.

Yusuf gets to his feet and loosens his own belt, takes off his rough wool tunic and his shift and drops them on the floor. “I am taking my time,” he says, and licks his lips just to watch the hitch in Nicolò’s breathing. He divests himself of the rest of his clothes, and only then crosses to where Nicolò stands, presses himself against him and kisses him soundly.

There is such sustaining beauty in the way they come together. Yusuf loves this man, loves his touch—the hands that grip his hips—and his mouth—kisses trailing down his neck and then a gentle bite to his collarbone. He groans softly, rocks his hips into Nicolò’s, thrills at the way they fit together even like this, against a stone wall in a single room high above the city.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò pants as they kiss and break and kiss again. “Please.”

Yusuf smiles, steals one last kiss from Nicolò’s swollen mouth, and lowers himself back to his knees. He noses at Nicolò through his breeches and takes the head of his dick into his mouth despite the linen still in the way. Nicolò makes a small, strangled noise, his hips bucking a fraction—he’s holding himself in check, Yusuf thinks, Nicolò’s hands running through Yusuf’s hair as he mumbles affection in the language of his birth. They know so many ways to say they love one another, each language associated with a different mood, place, and time, and Yusuf shivers as Nicolò articulates his devotion, each word falling upon him as deftly as touch. He looks up as he eases Nicolò’s breeches down his thighs and sees him bite his lip, falling silent right before Yusuf takes him in his mouth.

Nicolò has no use for words from that point on, responding instead with low moans as Yusuf works him with lips and tongue. Yusuf hums, pleased, as Nicolò’s hips rock with the rhythm he’s created, as he tastes Nicolò, bitterness and sweetness, sweat and soap as he slips his hands behind Nicolò’s ass to pull him closer. Nicolò’s left hand tightens in Yusuf’s hair, the fingers of his right tracing the line of Yusuf’s cheekbone. Yusuf moans as Nicolò moans, aroused by the scent of him, the trembling in Nicolò’s thighs. He pulls away and off, looking up into Nicolò’s eyes. “Fuck my mouth,” he says, his voice rough even to his own ears, before he takes Nicolò into his mouth and sucks harder.

Nicolò’s moans elevate by pitch, by urgency, and he does as he’s told, snapping his hips forward to fill Yusuf’s mouth. Yusuf can taste that Nicolò is close, groans happily as Nicolò finds his vocabulary again, alternating between the words they share for God and Yusuf’s name. His fingers tighten in Yusuf’s hair and then he’s bending forward, coming helplessly, and Yusuf swallows everything.

After a long moment, Yusuf pulls away, leverages the strength of his arms to ease Nicolò to kneel, his thighs braced against Yusuf’s. He presses kisses to his hair as Nicolò turns his face into Yusuf’s neck and wraps his arms around him, holding tightly, his breath hot against Yusuf’s skin.

“You have broken me,” Nicolò manages.

“I think you will recover,” Yusuf says fondly, running a hand up and down Nicolò’s back. “Please, _rya hayati_?” He’s almost embarrassed at the force with which he wants Nicolò’s hands upon him.

“ _Caíscimu_ ,” Nicolò murmurs, pulling back enough to ease Yusuf back to lie on the floor. “The same?”

Yusuf shakes his head, reaching for him. “Let me see your face.” 

Nicolò smiles at him, and there is such love in his eyes as he settles beside Yusuf that Yusuf is all but undone by it. Yusuf reaches to cup Nicolò’s jaw, leans in to kiss him, thrilling at the drag of Nicolò’s remaining clothes against his own naked body. “Please.”

“Shhhh,” Nicolò murmurs before he licks his hand, reaching down to wrap deft fingers around the length of Yusuf’s erection. “I have you.”

His first touch—firm and slick—makes Yusuf’s eyes flutter closed, but he opens them again as Nicolò works him. Nicolò’s gaze is warm. Yusuf could write poetry about his eyes, his beautiful eyes, but not now, not with Nicolò’s touch wresting such pleasure from his body. “ _Nicolò_ ,” he breathes, feeling too much to find words for more, giving himself over to the inarticulate sounds coaxed to his lips by the pressure building low in his belly.

“ _Mi amú_ ,” says Nicolò, thumbing the head of Yusuf’s cock, and it’s the sentiment that undoes him, that breaks open his heart as he crests and spills into Nicolò’s hand.

For a long moment afterwards he can do nothing but curl into the heat of Nicolò’s body. Nicolò whispers sweet words of adoration into his hair, holds him close as he shivers through aftershocks, eyes closed now.

“Are you with me?” Nicolò asks eventually, and Yusuf can hear that he is smiling.

“Barely,” he confesses, smiling too, and he seeks out Nicolò’s lips, his soft, hot mouth, kisses him over and over. 

“You,” Nicolò says between kisses. “Are a mess.”

“And you are still wearing hose,” Yusuf reminds him. He peels himself away reluctantly, and unsteadily gets to his feet, crosses to the bucket half-filled with well water in the corner of the room, cleaning himself up with the rough cloth they keep beside it. He can hear Nicolò undressing, hears the rustle of the mattress as Nicolò climbs upon it, and when he turns, his love is sprawled upon his stomach, hair in his face, yawning widely.

“So early?” Yusuf asks, his lips quirking with his amusement.

“Shut up and come lie with me,” Nicolò says, beckoning with one hand.

They have slept on better mattresses, with better linens and blankets to keep out the chill. But as they arrange themselves together, Yusuf pressed up against Nicolò’s back, his knees tucked behind Nicolò’s knees, Yusuf cannot wish to be anywhere else. Nicolò tangles their fingers, pulls their hands to rest over his heart.

“Did your day get better?” Yusuf asks, kissing the nape of Nicolò’s neck.

“ _Sci,_ " Nicolò says softly. "You always make things better."

Yusuf hums happily. " _Habib albi_ ,” he murmurs. “ _Habib albi_."

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to siria for beta and fact-checking. Notes on the historical background to this story can be found [[at my DW journal]](https://sheafrotherdon.dreamwidth.org/963928.html).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Habib Albi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26306614) by [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer)




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